Favorite Schools

Favorite Teams

Alabama

Change Region

comments

Deputies honored for rescuing 30 people during flooding

Sgt. Carl Griffith and Matt Morrison.jpg

Baldwin County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Carl Griffith (left) and Cpl. Matt Morrison were given the Lifesaver Awards on Tuesday for rescuing about 30 people during a storm last month. (Thyrie Bland | tbland@al.com)

The night the rain began to fall Griffith decided to man his department's high-water vehicle just in case it was needed.

"No sooner than doing so the... calls for service started coming in," Mack said.

Griffith then asked Morrison to assist him with the calls for help.

Mack said the Griffith and Morrison worked for six hours without a break, going to aid others. He said among the heroic things the deputies did was drive into rapidly raising water to get people who were stranded in vehicles.

Of the roughly 30 people the deputies rescued, two were children. Griffith and Morrison also had to help two Foley police officers who ended up getting stranded while trying to do a rescue, the sheriff said.

Griffith said the reason he and Morrison were in a position to help so many people was because of the preparations the Sheriff's Office made before the storm.

"We did our jobs," he said. "We did what we were trained to do. The sheriff had a good plan going into it. We just executed the sheriff's plan. That's all we did."

Morrison said one of things that he will never forget about the night the rain began is how quickly the flooding was happening.

He said he has never seen water raise that fast before.

"There were just things that had to be done, and we did everything we could do, regardless of the situation," he said. "We worked with what we had, and we did what we had to do."